ABSTRACT: This article establishes a definition of we-narrative based on a plural type of narrator, and in doing so challenges many of the presuppositions in the recent work on we-narratives. Despite an increased interest in this mode of narration, a definition of specifically first-person plural narrative as an independent narrative form has not yet been suggested and we-narrators have been mostly measured by the I-narrator’s yardstick. I propose instead to consider we-narrators as an independent type of a collective character narrator that distinguishes we-narratives as such from we-discourses in otherwise first-person narratives. To demonstrate that we-narrative exists as an independent narrative form, I will combine an analysis of three case studies—short stories by William Faulkner and Joyce Carol Oates as well as a novel by Joshua Ferris—with a discussion of existing contributions to the topic. I will rely on earlier work by Susan Lanser, Uri Margolin, and Franz Karl Stanzel and draw on contributions by Monika Fludernik, Brian Richardson, and Amit Marcus. A formal definition of we-narrative is required, I argue, to productively analyze the features and rhetorical effects specific to we-narrative in terms of its own conventions of narration and without linking these to the classical form of first-person narrative.

中文翻译：

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We-Narratives：集体叙事的独特性

摘要：本文基于复数类型的叙述者建立了我们叙事的定义，并且这样做挑战了最近关于我们叙事的工作中的许多预设。尽管人们对这种叙述方式越来越感兴趣，但尚未建议将第一人称复数叙述作为一种独立的叙述形式的定义，而我们叙述者主要是通过 I 叙述者的标准来衡量的。相反，我建议将我们-叙述者视为一种独立类型的集体角色叙述者，它将我们-叙述本身与其他第一人称叙述中的我们-话语区分开来。为了证明我们叙事作为一种独立的叙事形式存在，我将结合对三个案例研究的分析——威廉福克纳和乔伊斯卡罗尔奥茨的短篇小说以及约书亚费里斯的小说——以及对该主题的现有贡献的讨论。我将依赖 Susan Lanser、Uri Margolin 和 Franz Karl Stanzel 的早期工作，并借鉴 Monika Fludernik、Brian Richardson 和 Amit Marcus 的贡献。我认为，我们需要对我们叙事的正式定义，以根据其自身的叙事惯例来有效地分析我们叙事特有的特征和修辞效果，而无需将这些与第一人称叙事的经典形式联系起来。